Part of a healthy eating lifestyle involves substituting highly processed foods for healthier options whenever possible--so when it comes to white flour, here are some of the options for baking with whole grain flours.

Stone GroundStone ground wheat usually comes from red winter wheat and is a coarser ground compared to other types of flour. Its primary use is for breads, but doesn't work well in cakes or cookies as it can be tough.

Pastry FlourPastry flour is a type of wheat flour that comes from spring wheat and is a softer flour compared to stone ground. It works well in cookies, bars, and pies and is a great choice for making over your favorite cookie.

Thinking small is hard this time of year. I ran into two different friends at our neighborhood Greenmarket today who, like me, were lamenting they needed so little when the local cornucopia was spilling all over the sidewalk. I wanted to buy every one of Ray Bradley's soccer-ball-size heirloom tomatoes but limited myself to the one we will actually eat (given that I'm all but home alone this weekend while my consort is teaching a photo workshop). Usually we almost want to light up votive candles on slicing into one of his tomatoes.

I did, however, get seduced into buying a heaping half-pint of Ray's ground cherries. Those last for days (and, I shouldn't confess, The Cat loves to get one or two to bat around as a ball, with sound effects from the crinkly husk). And I'm not at all ashamed to admit I also took home a good cull of actual cherry tomatoes. Which have been the revelation of this summer.

Brian Gajeski has been cultivating an array of miniatures he lets his customers mix and match, without committing to a pre-chosen pint. So I could go heavy on the little black tomatoes, which we like best, and just accessorize with Sun Golds, golden pear tomatoes and regular cherry tomatoes. No wonder people get into a bagging frenzy at his stand.

Unlike "mature" tomatoes, these take only a single serrated-knife slice to be ready for salads or pasta or omelets. (Or not even one whack; you can add them whole.) You don't need to seed and peel, and they don't turn to mush in a salad.

Regular tomatoes will always be essential. The little guys are no match for bacon and lettuce in a sandwich, let alone up against eggplant and zucchini in a gratin. For a gazpacho, you'd be stuck with more skin than pulp. But sometimes tomatoes can be too big and fail.

Part of my Sunday morning ritual includes going to my local farmers' market. Fishkill Farms has a decent-size fruit and vegetable presence there, and I like to buy my fruit from them. This past Sunday, I bought some Spartan apples from them, and when I finally ate one, I almost cried because it tasted that good, although, I might've been brought to tears because I was watching Andy Roddick give his farewell speech... Regardless of tears or no tears, that apple--my first of the 2012 Fall Season--was the best tasting apple I'd had for months.

If you've ever wanted to help hungry and food-insecure kids and families get access to healthy food, now is a great time to start. September is Hunger Action Month, and there are lots of ways you can support the nationwide effort to fight hunger. Feeding America, our partner food bank organization, offers online tools to help you take action and raise awareness:

Sophie Dahl may have made her name modeling, but these days, she's devoted to writing--no surprise as she is the granddaughter of author Roald Dahl.

Dahl the younger recalls that The James and the Giant Peach author loved food but couldn't really make it for himself.

"He could do basics, and used to make a delicious sandwich for us when we were children, involving crispy bacon and marmalade," she says.

Lauren spoke with her for Gourmet about her latest cookbook Very Fond of Food, a forgotten chicken recipe
her grandmother Patricia Neal made famous in the 1970s, and what she'd
eat for her last meal on earth.

Comic book creator Josh Blaylock has turned one of his wacky story ideas into deliciously funny fortune cookies. Or should we say Misfortune Cookies. Blaylock, the Chicago-based CEO and founder of Devil's Due Entertainment, took time away from the drawing board to talk about the inspiration behind the project, and what we can expect in these devilish cookies.

What gave you the idea to write, er, wacky fortunes?I come from a comic book creator background (I'm a writer and artist by trade), and had an idea for this family that produces fortune cookies. They have to do all kinds of crazy things like summon spirits and ancestors to write the best fortunes in the business. One day something goes haywire and mischievous spirits get loose and start taking the writing into their own hands. It was a simple, cute story that I've yet to get around to producing. When Kickstarter came about, it seemed like a fun way to still play with the concept even if I haven't been able to write it all out yet.

What's your favorite fortune?Oh, probably some of the more ornery ones! I'm a fan of "To prevent the release of dark forces upon the Earth, don't open this fortune cookie," which you don't read until it's too late, or "If you take advice from fortune cookies, maybe it's too late for you already." I don't want to give them all away and ruin anyone's surprise.

Do you use an authentic Chinese recipe for the cookie?I source them from a very reputable local fortune cookie baker who uses fresh ingredients and produces them for us to order. They seal them up for us in the little individual containers, and that allows me to do what I do best: overseeing the packaging design and other creative aspects.

You've raised your Kickstarter funding -- can we expect to see Misfortune cookies on the shelves soon?I hope so! This was a litmus test to get us started and to see how people react. We've also taken some of them out to some in-person venues and the reaction has been very good. Hopefully we'll start getting them into stores now that we have samples to show off, and maybe you'll see the comic appear online sometime in 2013 as well. You can order them online, too.

Do you think your cookies will instigate a gruesome fortune cookie war, as good fortunes fight evil?Oh, I can only hope!

How do fortune cookies fit with your Devil's Due larger business? Any other food ideas in the works?I'm open to anything. Anything that gels with the overall fun and edgy feel of the Devil's Due brand. I kind of have this coffee idea I may play with next.

All this chatter about what is Midwestern pizza has me thinking and pining for the pizza of my youth. And it's nothing like the Midwest pizza described in the pages of New York's foodie web sites and newspapers.

Detroit-style pizza is a kind of cross between Sicilian and deep dish.

Today I'm off to Nashville for the weekend, and I fully intend on listening to all the live music I can handle and eating delicious food. I've heard amazing things and have quite the list of eateries that I fully intend to conquer.

I was hoping to eat at The Catbird Seat, but looks like that will be next to impossible! But friends told me about City House, Margot Café, and Silo, so chances are I won't starve. I will give a full report upon my return!

Am I missing anything in Nashville? Are there specific dishes I should eat at these restaurants?

This weekend I ate mini marinated peppers stuffed with mozzarella balls and thrown on the grill. Delicious! And so easy. Now I'm planning to experiment with different peppers and fillings.

Of course, I've eaten stuffed peppers before, but somehow they'd slipped from my memory till now. I remember my mom stuffing them with rice and a ground meat or sausage mixture, and the juice from the pepper keeping everything moist and tasty.

Summer might be unofficially over, but there's no reason to stop the barbecue train just because the calendar heads into September.

I had a pit stop at the Memphis airport over the weekend and had a chance to revisit a smoky classic: Barbecue Spaghetti. One of the world's great culinary mash-ups, like kimchi tacos, this dish is just tender slow-cooked pork in a sweet barbecue sauce slathered over spaghetti. The version I tried was served at an airport outpost of Jim Neely's Interstate Bar-B-Que.

If you find barbecue spaghetti offensive, you might want to avoid Memphis. The barbecue joints there also serve up nachos slathered in pulled pork and even barbecue baloney. But if you're like me and find the dish divine, try making a version of your own. You'll need the pulled pork, of course, as well as a good barbecue sauce recipe. A good place to start is our recipe from Pat and Gina Neely for Neely's Barbecue Sauce. The Neelys are related to the Interstate gang, although they run their own barbecue chain, Neely's Bar-B-Que, in Tennessee.